Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Skeet]

Can anyone help me with my mediaserver problem?

I'm running the latest media center (9.088 ) on two machines. I have one with media server up and running and sharing. When I run search for media server from the media library manager of the client, it comes up with

Invalid Media Server Information.
skeet2.mshome.net:80

It can't be a network fault cause skeet2 is the computer name of the server machine. mshome however is not the name of the workgroup (don't know if that's anything to do with it). Both machines are running xp.

Any help much appreciated.

[JimH]

Try running Media Server on a different port -- 81 or 8081, for example.

You may already have something else running on port 80, which is the normal port for a web server.

[RemyJ]

Actually, search is broken.   If the media server starts successfully then on the client try creating a new library directly using a location of "m01p://skeet2.mshome.net:80"

[JimH]

Actually, search is broken.  

Search works on my network.  I did have a problem earlier, but I've forgotten now what fixed it.  It may have been related to DHCP.

I'm sure there are some things in it that need work.

[RemyJ]

It won't work on any machine I've tried it on.  I get the same "Invalid Media Server Information" message.  I sent Matt some debugging info last week but I guess it'll have to wait until Nikolay get's back.

[JimH]

I wonder if it's a login/password problem.  I don't use any on mine.

What does the Media Server side say?

[Ken Brookings]

I get the same result as Skeet.  I've tried all the things suggested in this thread and more, same outcome.  So I've just been waiting for a new version to hopefully get it going.
Ken

[JimH]

There are some instructions here that might help:

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=beta;action=display;num=1037138072

[RemyJ]

I wonder if it's a login/password problem.  I don't use any on mine.

What does the Media Server side say?

Nothing.  It's the search that's failing not the connect.

The client sends the "GetMediaServerAddress" multicast  UDP message but then claims that all the responses are invalid.  I sent Matt a network trace that shows the requests and responses.

[JimH]

Same subnet?

Switch?

[RemyJ]

Same subnet?

Switch?

Yes and Yes.

Tried same MACHINE even.  

Here's what I send to Matt last week:

Well,  I did more testing tonight with a network trace running.

2 machines running media server and another running the client

gtjtp is a IBM Thinkpad 770Z with 2 network interfaces (gtjtp0, gtjtp1) running Win2kPro
ernie is a dual 400mhz PII machine with 2 network interfaces (ernie0, ernie1) running Win2kServer
ralph is the source machine, a dual 1.8ghz P4 XEON with 1 network interface running Win2kServer

I won't bore you with the ethernet, ip and udp headers but here's the exchange when I run "Search..." from ralph.

-->GetMediaServerAddress
<--MediaServer:gtjtp0.peakin.com:80
<--MediaServer:ernie0:80
<--MediaServer:gtjtp0.peakin.com:80
<--MediaServer:ernie0:80

ernie0 and gtjtp0.peakin.com are both valid names and ralph can resolve them to ip addresses (from the hosts file, not dns).
I set up the machines so ernie would only return a host name and gtjtp would return fully qualified domain names to see if there was a difference.  There wasn't.

Notice that the 2 messages from each machine came back with the same host name instead a host name for each of the interfaces on the media server machines.  Are 2 responses sent because the media server recognizes it's bound to 2 interfaces or because it got 2 broadcast requests, 1 on each interface?  Either way, they shouldn't be duplicates.

I get 4 pop up boxes with the "Invalid Media Server Information" message.

Another little tidbit...  If I turn on ralph's second interface and run the exact same test,  I get 8 popup messages instead of 4.  I'm guessing that since the second interface is also getting the multicast responses, MC is seeing double responses.  You might want to make the responses unicast directly back to the source instead of multicast.

Finally no combination of machines and/or interfaces get's me by the "Invalid" message.  Even if I run both client and server on the same machine with 1 interface and nothing else running on the local network I still get the message.

All machines are running 9.0.85 and show media server version 1.0.135 and using the library manager, I can catalog and connect to all of the media servers with the "m01p://" url.

Hope all this helps...remy

[JimH]

Does it still fail if two machines are on the same subnet?

The switch will stop the broadcast from reaching the other subnets.

[RemyJ]

Does it still fail if two machines are on the same subnet?

The switch will stop the broadcast from reaching the other subnets.

Jim, It fails if the client and server are on the same machine let alone the same subnet.  The network monitor shows that the response packets are received by the client machine.  The fact that the error message box that pops up on the client actually has the contents of the response packet in it proves that the client is getting the message.

[Skeet]

Thanks for the support, I've tried manually adding the location, but to no avail.  The machines are on the same subnet and I have no passwords/logons etc. Remys point about the error message returning the response from the server (with server location) is key I think. It can't simply be a network connection problem.

[RemyJ]

Skeet, what happens when you manually add the location?  That part's been working fine.

The media server window title bar should show you the ip address and port that it bound itself to.  Try connecting with that rather than the name that was returned in the message box.  Example: "m01p://192.168.1.1:80"

[JimH]

Remy,
Do you have the server set to require a login and password?  I don't.

Jim

[RemyJ]

Remy,
Do you have the server set to require a login and password?  I don't.

Jim

No login or password.   But Jim, the problem with the "Invalid Media Server..." is on the search, not the connect.  I'm not sure what having a login or password set would have to do with it.

[Skeet]

Thanks Remy,
Manually putting the address in has worked for me.
Like you say, it's the search that's not working.